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Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
That which thinks, feels, wills, etc, is what I'd call 'mind'. I don't think merely being conscious is quite the same as thinking.
How does mind differ from brain then?

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Originally posted by Starrman
That depends on how you define mind. If you're just saying the place where conscious and subconscious exist it's no different to brain. I was trying (perhaps unrealistically) to ascertain what differs mind from brain.
I had a similar conversation with Bosse the other day and I'm quite content with my definition of 'mind' as the output of the brain. It provides a clear cut between both, in my opinion, all while maintaining their interdependence.

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Originally posted by Starrman
How does mind differ from brain then?
How does speech differ from the tongue?

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Originally posted by Palynka
I had a similar conversation with Bosse the other day and I'm quite content with my definition of 'mind' as the output of the brain. It provides a clear cut between both, in my opinion, all while maintaining their interdependence.
This is quite pertinent to that discussion:
http://moebius.psy.ed.ac.uk/~dualism/papers/brains.html

It articulates my vague intuition that considering the mind and brain to be one and the same thing is somehow incoherent.

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Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
How does speech differ from the tongue?
Okay, but how does thought differ from mind then?

I'm just not sure that mind is anything that isn't already dealt with somewhere else. Unless you just call all the funcitonal processes of the brain mind in which case, so what?

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Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
This is quite pertinent to that discussion:
http://moebius.psy.ed.ac.uk/~dualism/papers/brains.html

It articulates my vague intuition that considering the mind and brain to be one and the same thing is somehow incoherent.
After my Philosophy of Mind course last year, in which I really wanted to learn how such a thing as the mind worked, and indeed enterring with the belief that the mind was indeed something, I was left with the very strong doubt that there's no such thing as mind by the time we'd finished. That was in stark and upsetting contrast to the lecturer's view and my own original view.

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Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
This is quite pertinent to that discussion:
http://moebius.psy.ed.ac.uk/~dualism/papers/brains.html

It articulates my vague intuition that considering the mind and brain to be one and the same thing is somehow incoherent.
I'm finding this text somewhat unclear.

Namely:
- The distinction between answers (1) and (3).

- And, perhaps related to the point above, his refutation of (3):

Thomas Nagel (1974) in his much cited paper, put forward an argument which, if valid, eliminates at a stroke our third solution. If, he suggests, an entity is conscious then, no matter how alien that consciousness may be to us, it always makes sense to ask what it would be like to be that entity. Hence it is at least meaningful to ask ourselves what it would be like to be, say, a bat whereas it would not even make sense to ask ourselves what it would be like to be a computer (though, in terms of the sort of things we humans do, we have far more in common with our personal computers than we do with bats or even our pets!)

How does this refute (3)?

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Originally posted by Palynka
I'm finding this text somewhat unclear.

Namely:
- The distinction between answers (1) and (3).

- And, perhaps related to the point above, his refutation of (3):

Thomas Nagel (1974) in his much cited paper, put forward an argument which, if valid, eliminates at a stroke our third solution. If, he suggests, an entity is conscious then, no matter ...[text shortened]... our personal computers than we do with bats or even our pets!)

How does this refute (3)?
I agree, having read Nagel's paper, I still fail to see how he excludes monism. It's a nice paper and plenty of people think it's decisive, but it only works when placed on the traditional western view that presupposes the existence of minds.

It's very hard for us to think that we're just the physical make up alone, that there's no other element to our existence, but that in itself is not enough to dismiss the notion.

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Originally posted by Starrman
I agree, having read Nagel's paper, I still fail to see how he excludes monism. It's a nice paper and plenty of people think it's decisive, but it only works when placed on the traditional western view that presupposes the existence of minds.

It's very hard for us to think that we're just the physical make up alone, that there's no other element to our existence, but that in itself is not enough to dismiss the notion.
How would you define (in a sentence) Epiphenomenalism, Interactionism and Monism?

Would my definition of mind as output fit in any of those? Not that I believe that since this output is also used as input, then consciousness is not merely a side-product of the brain.

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Originally posted by Starrman
Okay, but how does thought differ from mind then?

I'm just not sure that mind is anything that isn't already dealt with somewhere else. Unless you just call all the funcitonal processes of the brain mind in which case, so what?
Thought as 'the content of cognition' (spatial images are seemingly unavoidable, to me at any rate) takes place 'within the mind'.

Naming 'the functional processes of the brain' 'mind' has the virtue of economy, at least, and helps to distinguish between the brain qua grey matter and the ability to use it.

In parallel: take the case of the white ant. To all intents and purposes, a termite colony functions like a distributed brain, if you like, with the intellect located in the queen; the various classes of termite represent various functions of the hive mind. Yet they each have their own tiny brain.

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Originally posted by Starrman

It's very hard for us to think that we're just the physical make up alone, that there's no other element to our existence, but that in itself is not enough to dismiss the notion.
But you can accept that without doing away with the concept of mind and brain. Because the exact nature of the physical make-up you refer to is not settled beyond dispute. For example, your vague notion that thoughts are electricity makes me ask precisely what that means. Could mind be, say, the electro-magnetic field generated by the body/brain (and possibly extending beyond it)? It seems to me that your reductionist view rests on a superstitious notion of matter as a solid substance.

Incidentally, what region or structure in the brain specializes in conscious thinking?

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Originally posted by Palynka

How does this refute (3)?
I'll have to read up on it a bit more, man.

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Originally posted by Palynka
How would you define (in a sentence) Epiphenomenalism, Interactionism and Monism?

Would my definition of mind as output fit in any of those? Not that I believe that since this output is also used as input, then consciousness is not merely a side-product of the brain.
Epiphenomenalism is a weird one, and I haven't really covered it, but basically you'd hold the view that everything the mind does is unable to cause a change in the physical. So there's a kind of dualism but it's unlinked, that sounds bizarre to me.

Interactionism just says there are feedbacks in a dualist view, mental and physical aspects can influence each other and originate in each other.

Monism is just that there is no seperation of body and mind and that being is just one thing, consciousness exists as a par of the physical body.

I guess you'd be closest to an interactionist than the other two, at first glance. I imagine there are always levels within these definitions that can be extracted or refined.

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Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
But you can accept that without doing away with the concept of mind and brain. Because the exact nature of the physical make-up you refer to is not settled beyond dispute. For example, your vague notion that thoughts are electricity makes me ask precisely what that means. Could mind be, say, the electro-magnetic field generated by the body/brain (and p ...[text shortened]... tance.

Incidentally, what region or structure in the brain specializes in conscious thinking?
I have to get back to work, but I'll answer these this evening.

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